A. Quality Zones
B. Good Room Descriptions
C. How to do Mobs
D. How to do Objects
E. Language and Typos
F. Time, Topology, Ecology and Climate
G. Theme and Plot
H. Maps
I. Some Building Tips from an Old Fox
J. “Builder’s Block”

A. Quality Zones

Different builders probably have different opinions of what makes a zone good, but usually quite a few of them coincide. To me the criteria of a "Quality zone" are these:

1. The zone should have a theme, and all room descs, mob and items in the zone should be consistent to that theme.

2. If the Mud has a theme, the zone should be consistent to that theme too.

3. The zone should be original, or have a funny and/or unusual angle to the Stock themes. To me this is far more important than the details of the zone specified below. I see no reason adding more elf/gnome/ogre etc. zones to the stock ones otherwise. Creativity and imagination should always rate higher than form!

4. The rooms should be logically linked together, so that the careful player can map the zone on a paper. The topography and climate conditions should be logical too, so that you move successively from one type of terrain to another. A varying topography is preferable, for instance too large moors or forests easily get boring. Also the plan of a quality zone should not be too simple - (unless it is a newbie zone of course!) - but a bit ingenious, with some tricky mazes and traps for the players to work through. (Avoid death traps though, all players hate these! Even dead ends, that you can only exit by recalling are annoying, so they should be used very sparsely).

6. Obviously all descs should be in good English, i. e correct grammar and punctuation, and no typos.

7. All rooms must have a room desc and these should preferably be between 4-8 lines. Longer descs add to the spam and should only be used occasionally, when you need it to get everything said. (Preferably leave some of the info to signs and extra keyword descs though!). Shorter descs are acceptable if you CAN say the essential in one line, and that line is original and/or funny. (2 full lines is normally minimum for a room desc though).

8. All Mobs/Objects must have a short and a long description. For the mobs a description of 2-4 lines is obligatory too. (See also below under MOBS and OBJECTS)

9. All the objects should have an extra keyword desc too, even if that isn’t required in most Muds. (See also below under OBJECTS)

10. All room descs should be individual, unless you use repeated descs consciously and with a purpose, for instance to create a maze or the impression of an endless, monotonous environment, like a desert.

11. All directions a player can go in should have a dir. desc, and preferably the other directions too. (This is what you see when you type for instance 'look north').

12. Items mentioned in a room desc should often have an extra keyword desc, especially IF they are important to the game. You can put in qualified info about the zone in several "layers" in these extra keyword descs, to promote the careful player before the "Power leveller" who only goes for quick experience). Extra descs also add to the depth and atmosphere of a zone. In 4D we also have Listen and Smell descs, which should be set in all rooms too.

13. The zone should be pretty well supplied with Mob/Objects, since empty zones are boring to the players. Preferably most of the mobs should be individual - (killing the same ogre twenty times is terribly boring!). Be careful what align you set on the mob, dependant on if you want them to assist each other or not. (You can even make a mob assist the player in a fight against another mob, which can be quite amusing).

14. Any "special" items i.e. high-effect/low-level weapons and equip should be extremely hard to get, either reset on a Mob that is top level for the zone, or very hard to find (reset in the middle of a maze for instance). If the code allows it, these special items should preferably be reset to load only about 25% of the time, or be flagged "artifact" which means they will be unique. Too many of these special items destroy the game, making leveling too easy. Only one or two items, which are "top level" for the zone, should be made in each zone. Top items should mainly be used only as quest prizes, and not reset into the zone.

15. In lower level zones the ev. aggro mobs should be sentinel, and/or kept behind closed/locked doors, to protect the newbie players.

16. All entrances/exits to the zone should be flagged no_mob, to keep the mobiles from wandering all over the realms. High level aggros and Quest Mobs should be flagged !summon and stay_zone as well, to keep them from being charmed and dragged away. (The reason for this is obviously to protect the lower level players from being attacked and prevent shortcuts to Quests).

17. Each zone should contain at least a few Mobs with scripts, to make it livelier. In a top quality zone most of the Mobs could have a script of some sort, because this highly adds to the flavour of the game! Too extensive scripts add to the spam though, so be a bit restrictive with them, especially with greet scripts.

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B. Good Room Descriptions

In this Mud the use of the word YOU in room descs isn't strictly forbidden as in most Muds. However it should be avoided as much as possible, since descs starting with "You are..." are generally considered to be bad descs by most Mud Administrators. And since you might be wanting to build in another Mud later, it would be a good idea to get into good habits as soon as possible.

Below are some guidelines for what you should do and not do in a room desc:

1. NEVER use expressions like "You are standing", "You are walking" etc. The reason for this is that the player could be flying, swimming, sleeping or resting.

2. NEVER tell a player what he feels, while entering a room. Different players feel different things and the feelings also vary with the level of the player, and if he has visited the zone before. It can be very annoying to be told that you are feeling afraid, if the zone is level 10 and you are level 40. Also it can be irritating to be told that you feel safe and comfortable, if you just fled from combat into that room. So phrases like "you feel scared" or "you feel like you want to get out of here" are basically bad descs. They in fact think for the player. A good desc is supposed to get a player into a certain mood, not TELL him what he feels.

3. NEVER refer to how the player is dressed and equipped, since this can vary considerably and the player can actually be naked. So expressions like "The heat is making you feel uncomfortable in your heavy armor." or "You are shivering of cold in your thin clothes." should be avoided for obvious reasons.

4. AVOID describing the Mobs in the room in the room desc. It looks awfully silly if the room desc talks about the terrible vampire threatening you, while at the same time you can see the steaming turds of the same vampire on the floor after somebody just killed it. Also describing the mobs is what the mob desc is supposed to do. (You can talk about mobs in the zone in general terms though, for instance describe a city street as crowded and full of busy citizens).

5. Be careful about how you describe the size and looks of things. What is "normal" to one race may be unnatural to another. We've got several different player races here, and not all of them refer to human standards. And "a beautiful woman" by human standards could look simply terrible to a Dwarf or a Spacewolf.

6. Avoid describing objects also that are also reset in a room, since that will most probably cause the description to be double. For instance, if you talk about the large bed in a room and then reset it as an object too, you'll end up with very boring double descs. It's of course OK to describe furniture in a room desc, but don't reset it too then.

7. Remember that you can usually enter a room from different directions. So expressions like "This room is much lighter than the one you just came from" should be avoided, unless there really is just one entrance to the room, or the statement is true whichever way you came from.

8. Avoid statements about the weather, for instance "The sun is burning on your head" since this looks very silly if the weather message at the same time tells you that it is raining or that there is a thunderstorm going on. If you feel you have to mention the weather to create a special atmosphere, put the flag "indoors" on the room, regardless of what the sector is. (This flag shuts the weather messages out.) The same goes for if you set the sector to desert or if the zone is in an arctic region where in both cases rain would be a very unlikely event.

9. AVOID describing the exits of the room in the room desc, this is what the direction descs are supposed to do. The room desc should be used mainly to describe what is IN the room, not what's outside it. There are some obvious exceptions to this though. For instance if you are standing in a tower or on a high mountain, the desc could be used to show the view from that place. Or if the room is a street or a road, the desc could be used to describe the exterior of the houses lining that street, or the landscape along the road. (It's very hard to vary the descs on streets and roads otherwise, after you have described the paving, the ruts, the colour of the dust etc.).

10. Avoid repeated descs as much as possible, since these are boring for the player and also makes it harder to navigate in the zone. In my opinion repeated descs are only acceptable in a maze, and in very large open spaces, like bogs, deserts or grassland, where repeated descs can make the player feeling lost or add to a sense of "endlessness". (Max 10% of the rooms in a zone should have repeated descs though, and 0% is always preferable!)

This was a lots of NEVERS and DON'TS. So what SHOULD you do do make a room desc lively and interesting? Here are a few suggestions:

11. Try to make the description of the room as vivid as possible, using plenty of descriptive adjectives, and colours as well as smells and sounds to add to the overall impression. If the room is indoors, describe the texture of walls, floor and ceilings, curtains, tapestries and carpets etc. What do the windows look like? What do you see looking out of them? Does the room give an impression of riches or poverty? Is the impression comfortable or cheerless? Is it grand or small? Dark or well lit? Describe the lamps and the furniture (unless you reset the furniture pieces, see point 6 above). Fireplaces usually are good to create a "cosy" impression if that's what you like it to be, as are thick carpets, tapestries easy chairs etc. An ascetic, bare room, like a monk's cell, creates another type of atmosphere, mildew and cobwebs a third etc.

12. You can use smells and sounds to add to the overall impression (for instance the smell of mildew, rot and decay in a cellar or tunnel and fresh air or the scent of flowers to create a cheery impression). Similar uses of sounds could be the howling of wolves or the squeaking of rats as opposed to the chirping of birds or the humming of bees. Dappled sunshine, howling winds or wet dripping mists are good to create special impressions too, but remember to put the "indoor" flag on the room if you use those.

13. If the room is outdoors, for instance a forest, try to describe as much of the vegetation as possible. What trees grow in the forest? Old or young? Leafy or piny? What does the undergrowth look like? Are there any berries and mushrooms and if so are they edible? What creatures inhabit the woods - (birds, insects, larger and smaller mammals)? If you reset the wildlife as mobs, don't describe the individual animals themselves though (except in general terms like "this forest has a rich wildlife"). What you CAN describe is the traces they leave (footprints, hoof-marks, broken twigs, scratches and claw marks on tree trunks, bird's nests etc.). You will find that there are a lot of things to describe in a pretty ordinary forest. Then if you add the habitats and traces of some imaginary things, like elves, trolls, dragons or leprechauns, there will be even more...

14. You can also give an impression of the inhabitants of a zone by describing the refuse they left: animal and fish or even human bones, shells of cockles and mussels, discarded garments and broken weapons etc. Rightly used this can give the player an idea of what sort of mob they are going to encounter in the zone, the size of it, if it's vegetarian or carnivorous, if it's likely to be aggressive etc. It's usually a good idea to give some hints about the zone in the room descs, since this rewards the careful players that take their time to read those descs, while the impatient hack'n'slashers may run straight into disaster. We want the players to read our room descs, and this is one way to teach them that it's well worth while doing so.

15. Another way of using the room descs is to tell parts of the "plot" of the zone in them. In the Camelot zone I built about half the zone is the road leading to Camelot. I use about half the descs of that road to tell the story of King Arthur and the Round Table. Most of it is just story telling, but every now and then I sprinkle it with some useful information. If the player is told that Sir Gawain hates Sir Lancelot's guts after the latter killed his kid brother Gareth in a skirmish in the Queen's bedroom, this is of course a juicy piece of gossip. But it will also lead the intelligent player to the conclusion, that should he encounter these two knights in the same room, one of them would be more likely to join in the fight on the player's side, rather than that of his fellow knight's...

16. The best way to leave useful information about a zone though is to use extra keyword descs, mob descs or scripts that are triggered off by a special action on the players' side. Very few players ever bother to look at items in a room desc or mobs, and those that actually do should be rewarded for their trouble. So, if a special object is hidden in a zone, drop some hints about it in the first room descs, then move the information deeper down to the extra keyword descs, or to stories being told by bards or gossiping housewives… About 90 percent of the players are going to miss that item, as they rush through the zone killing everything that moves...

17. Descs that are too long are almost as bad as too short, since they get spammy and make most players turn the brief mode on when traversing the zone. A length between 4 and 8 lines is mostly preferable. Even length descs also look best when you move around in a zone. The length of the desc could however be adjusted to the time you expect the player to spend in the room. This means that the desc of a tavern or a church with a healer in it should be considerably longer than that of a "travel zone" like a road or a large forest. Also if you limit your descs to the length of 6 rather than 12 lines, they suffice for a zone of twice the size, which is a good thing, since good room descs don't come easy. If you feel that you have more to say about the room than can be contained to 8 lines, preferably put that extra information into extra keyword descs. (This means the player actually has to type "look tapestry" to see the motive of it.)

18. Remember to use the descs that we provide in 4D. Above all these are useful to make the Quests more challenging. Looking ABOVE, UNDER or BEHIND objects can provide extra information that would help solve a Quest. (These descs are particularly useful in combination with undisplayed objects, where you have to read the room desc to actually see the object). LISTEN and SMELL desc add to the atmosphere and can also be use for extra info. For example ‘A putrid smell drifts in from the south.’ could prompt a player to look south and discover a hidden portal that he otherwise would have missed. Remember that there must always be some sort of hint about an undisplayed object in the room, but it could be put in any of the descriptions.

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C. How to do Mobs

1. Name / alias list
The name of the Mob identifies it to the player, and should be as complete as possible. The "main" name should be placed first. Mob names should NOT contain the words "the" or "a".

So if the Mob is a big, black dog, the name should be ‘Dog big black’. If the Mob is a shopkeeper named Gimli who is also a dwarf, the Mob name should preferably be ‘Gimli Shopkeeper Dwarf’.

2. Short desc.
The short desc will be put in as the beginning of a sentence in any act that the Mob is involved in. Consequently it must NOT have a period at the end.
Adequate short descs for the above Mobs would be ‘the black dog’ and. ‘Gimli’, which will give the following messages in the game: ‘The black dog's bite injures you.’ or ‘Gimli tells you "Can I interest you in some armor?".’

3. Long desc.
The long desc is what you see of the Mob when you enter the room or type look. Consequently the long desc should be a full sentence with a period at the end. The long desc must be restricted to one line, but should preferably contain a bit more than just the basic information: ‘Mob-name is here.’ which is rather dull.

Adequate long descs for the above mobs could for example be: ‘A big black dog snarls at you with the tail between its legs.’ and ‘Gimli, the Dwarf welcomes you to his shop.’

4. Look Description
The look description gives you the chance to enter some more information about the Mob. It could be used solely to describe the looks of the Mob, or to enter some extra information about his background story, to add a bit more flavour to the Mob. I like most of the Mob descs to have a funny or useful angle too (in that way you encourage the players to start looking at more mobs).

The mob desc can also be used to enter some information about Quests or the game in general, like hints about where a special item is hidden, or which way you should choose to get safely to the castle. This type of information adds a lot to the depth of the zone, and rewards the careful player before the common "hack'n'slasher". (Generally Mob scripts are better for this however.)

The desc isn't so important for aggro mobs, since you rarely get a chance to look at those. This doesn't mean that you can leave out the desc on an aggro Mob, but don't waste your best efforts in story-writing on that type of mobs!

5. The !track Flag
This mob flag can be used on mobs that you want to be especially hard to find, (and also be set on the Mob room, if it’s sentinel). It prevents the player from using the ‘track’ spell to find the mob.

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D. How to do Objects

1. Name / alias list
As well as for the Mobs, the alias identifies the object making it possible for the player to interact with it. It can and should consist of several keywords. The "main" name should be first, and the words "the" or "a" should NOT be included in the alias list.

It's important that the name, short desc and long desc correspond, or the player will have trouble getting the object. The exception is if you have a definite reason to keep the player guessing, (for instance to make an object extra hard to get.)

Adequate object names could be ‘waterskin skin red’ or ‘excalibur sword twohand’.

2. Short desc
The short desc of the object will be put in the middle of a sentence. Consequently it should start with a small letter and not have a period at the end.

Adequate short descs for the above objects could be: ‘the waterskin’ and ‘Excalibur’ producing the messages ‘You get the waterskin.’ and ‘You wield Excalibur.’.

3. Long desc
The long desc is what you see when you enter the room (if the object is reset on the floor). Consequently the long desc should be a full sentence with a period at the end. It must be restricted to one line.

Adequate long descs for the above items would be for instance: ‘A red waterskin has been left here.’ and ‘The sword Excalibur is thrust deep into the stone.’

4. Extra keyword desc
A description of the object is not obligatory in most Muds, since very few players ever bother to look at an object. It is however required in 4D, since this desc makes the objects so much more interesting. If you don’t put in an extra keyword desc the player who types 'look item' gets the message 'You see nothing special' in Circle code, or just a repeating of the long desc in other codes.

The desc is particularly important if the object is in any way special (for instance has a large addaffect or a perm spell). It can be used to describe the effects of a pill or potion, if you want to spare the non-mage players the use of an identity scroll. In some cases an object should even have several descs. For instance the main desc could say. ‘The stone is covered in moss and lichen making the inscription on it almost illegible.’, and then another extra desc with the keyword ‘inscription’, would show the actual text on the stone.

You can also use this desc to add hidden information on an undisplayed object, thus rewarding the careful player for his trouble of reading the room descs. This could be in the form of an engraved message, or a secret cache with a note or letter inside it.

And don’t forget the Smell, Taste and Feel descriptions on objects. Perhaps the inscription is invisible to the eye, but the command ‘feel stone’ would yield the information ‘An inscription has been engraved into the smooth surface of the stone.’. And all food and drink objects should naturally have a smell and taste descs.

The extra keyword could also be used to give the true name of the object, in case you want it to be a bit extra hard to get. In this case the name of the object could be simply ‘Excalibur’, the long desc could for instance say: ‘A sword is thrust into the stone here.’ but the keywords to it could be ‘sword Excalibur’. Then the command ‘look sword’ would produce the information ‘This is the famous sword Excalibur, that only the true descendant of Uther Pendragon is supposed to be able to extract from the stone.’ Without first looking at the sword, the player can't get it.

5. ‘Secret’ objects
The !display object flag is the most useful OLC feature when it comes to designing Quests, and something that not many Muds have. With this flag set, mortals cannot see the object in the room. The secret objects are a kind of characteristic for 4D, and are used in most quests. Generally these objects are either containers or portals.

The !display flag is more effective than a Hidden, or Invisible flag, since many players can detect hidden and see invisible. An undisplayed portal is harder to find than a secret door, since anyone can type ‘search' a couple of times in a room.

The main rule when using a !display flag on an object is to always put a hint about the existence of that object somewhere else in the room. It can be in any of the descs, also the exit or listen and smell descs, or even be set on another object or a stationary mob. But the hit must be there, so that the player can find the right keyword by just reading the descs. Making the players resort to guessing is really bad building.

The flag !locate on an object prevents it from being found by those who have the spell < locate object > and should also be used on all objects you want to be extra hard to find.

6. Keys
You can have a lot of fun with keys, making them look like something quite different and/or giving them a special name, that could be a bit hard to figure out. A locked door usually means that there is something worth the trouble on the other side of it, and to get the key could be made quite a bit harder than the standard procedure of resetting it on a tough mob guarding the door.

The first step is to make the door pick-proof, bash-proof and pass-proof. Then you hide the key somewhere else in the zone, so the players have to hunt for it a bit. Giving it a secret name would make the hunt a bit harder, as would a !locate flag, although it's usually possible to get an object simply by typing ‘get all’. A way to prevent the use of this command at least to some extent would be to reset it in an undisplayed container, or in the middle of a lot of trash objects, some of those could be cursed too...

One special thing with keys is that they generally don't save when you log out. The reason why the code is set up like that is probably that keys are regarded as one-time objects. However, this becomes a problem if a player enters a locked area and then quits or loses link while still in there. Since the key disappears on log-out, they would possibly need the help of an imm to get out.

The solution to this problem is to either set the key as some other object type, (for instance Treasure), or to use the flag key-save, which makes the key to save on log-out.

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E. Language and typos

We have high standards in 4D, and typos are not accepted. A good spellchecker usually takes care of this, but there are some words that the spellchecker doesn’t pick up and a number of these words become very common Builder mistakes. Below is a list of the words that often get mixed up in descs:

Their, There, and They're.
- Their is possessive. Ex. ‘The cityguards wielded their swords.’
- There indicates location. Ex. ‘The dragon was not in his lair when we got there.’
- They're is a contraction of "they are". Ex. ‘They're trying to rob the city Bank.’

To, Too, and Two.
- To indicates direction. Ex. ‘I went to Camelot.’
- Too means also or indicates excessiveness. Ex. ‘Shorty went to Camelot too.’ Ex. ‘There were too many cityguards for us to kill.’
- Two represents the numeral 2. Ex. ‘I killed two cityguards.’

A lot are two separate words, "alot" is not a word.

Its and It's
- Its is the possessive form of the pronoun "it". Ex. ‘The dog devoured its meat.’
- It's is the contraction of "it is" or "it has". Ex. ‘It's difficult to kill a dragon.’

It’s usually a good idea to run a special search for the words above.
Remember that you will be required to correct any typos or grammar mistakes you make in your zone yourself, so check it thoroughly before turning it in for approval. This saves the time of both yourself and whoever is doing the quality control!

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F. Time, Topology, Ecology, Climate

There are 4 basic foundations to consistency in a zone: Time period, Topography, Ecology and Climate. If you keep those factors in mind, you’ll also find that writing the descs becomes easier.

What you should do is to create a micro cosmos, with an ecology of its own. The climate, the geology, the vegetation, the insects, frogs, snakes, birds and mammals should all interact to a logical whole. Try to figure out what the different animals eat, which are carnivores and which are preys, where would their nests, dens and lairs be placed etc. Then put little details about those things into the room descs and extra keyword descs.

If there are people in the zone (or elves, dwarves, hobbits, gnomes etc.) you have to add an economy too and a culture. What do they live from? Are they peasants, hunters, merchants, miners, robbers... Who are their enemies? How do they protect themselves against those? What does the power hierarchy look like? What do they do in their spare time? You can add museums, sport arenas, libraries, chapels etc. to the towns. This is not usually done, most mud towns only have some shops and the odd Inn, so anything a bit above the ordinary will add to the originality and depth of the zone, and might also give you some ideas for some mobs and objects out of the ordinary.

The climate aspect is very important - you wouldn't find polar bears in a desert for instance. And the culture and time aspects are just as important, anachronisms should be avoided for instance, unless you use them on purpose to create a funny angle.

Try to make the descs consistent to the time and location of the zone. For instance you'd be more likely to encounter a log cabin or an adobe hacienda in the Old West, than a marble castle, wouldn't you? Come to think of it, marble castles weren't all that frequent in the medieval period either, those fortresses were mainly built from grey stone, and were pretty bare, cold, damp and depressing indoors.

Something that always annoys me is when the streets in a medieval town are described as broad, straight, tree-lined boulevards - that creates a completely wrong impression. The streets in a medieval town were narrow, cobbled and winding - boulevards are an invention of the nineteenth century. And the streets of a western cattle town are broad and straight, allowing the herds of cattle to be driven straight through the town, and completely without paving, dusty in dry weather and a sea of mud when it rains. And usually they have a wooden footwalk along the houses. (Small details like this vastly add to the "realism" of a zone.)

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G. Theme and Plot

Every good zone should have a theme, and if you can add a plot or Background story to it that's even better. This generally makes the zone more interesting to the players and also easier to build, since you'll get a lot of ideas for the descs from the plot. Naturally, if the Mud has an overall theme, your zone should be consistent with that too. In 4D, where we have 4 main themes, this leaves you a pretty free reign.

The plot can be totally your own invention, but it can also draw inspiration from history, myths, books, and movies. The main thing about a theme is to make everything in the zone consistent with it.

One very useful plot is to make an internal war going on in the zone, since that can make the game in the zone a lot more interesting for the intelligent player, who knows how to make use of the situation for his own profit. It could be for instance two tribes fighting each other, or a couple of rivalling knights or merchants. What you do is to make half the mobs good aligned and half bad aligned and put an aggro_good or aggro_evil on some of them and an assist_good or assist_evil on others. Then if a good-aligned player attacks an evil mob, he might be assisted in the fight by any good mobs in the same room and vice versa. Or the player could be careful to stay neutral, so as not to be attacked by either side. Some zones even keep tabs of which side you attacked, by using elaborate scripts.

There are also ways to make mobs attack other mobs, which could add to the realism of the zone. Mostly this is done with scripts, but spec_assassin in the code will make the mob attack everything lower and up to seven levels higher than itself, except for thieves and other assassins. A cave bear for instance would naturally attack everything that entered his cave, not just PCs, as is usually the case. Mobs that aggro other mobs should be used with restraint however, or the zone will be strewn with corpses.

Another plot could be to have some sort of built-in Quest in the zone. It can be a hidden item that the players must search for, a kidnapped princess, a prisoner that needs to be rescued from the dungeon etc. What you do here is to drop a few hints about the plot in the first room descs, and then move the clues deeper and deeper down to extra keyword descs, object and mob descs, scripts etc. Wandering minstrels or gossiping storekeepers can tell you parts of the story, others can be found on scraps of paper, or in books in a library that you need to type ‘look book’ or ‘read book’ to read. The idea is make the players start reading the descs, because if he doesn't he might miss the best item in the whole zone.

You can use parts of a book or a movie as plot too, which is what all those Wheel of Time and Tolkien Muds do. Read the book, extract the parts of the plot in it that you find interesting and use them to build up your zone. A lot of players appreciate when they recognise names, surroundings and stories from something they have once read or seen in a movie. Stealing? Perhaps, but it’s more known as fan-fiction. And as long as the Mud isn’t commercial or the copyright holder explicitly forbids it, I see no real problem with it. If you do it with some finesse you probably stand a good chance of creating an interesting zone.

Yet another type of plot is the "historical" or “mythical” background. Most medieval Muds (except the fantasy ones) are based on at least some part of real history. And there are other interesting periods too, like antique Greece, old Egypt etc. where you could use some of the myths or historical facts for your plot (that is if your Mud's general theme allows this sort of themes). One good thing about this is that this old material should be ‘public domain’, so there will be no copyright issues.

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H. Maps

It's a good idea ALWAYS to map your zone on a grid (on a paper or preferably in the computer), before you start working on it on-line. It may seem unnecessary work to you, but I consider the time spent on it well used. If the zone is large and complicated you can easily get lost in there yourself! Show the exits and special options like no_mob in the map, so you can control it easily after finished building.

The maps on our website are all made with the simplest of tools, the Paint program that comes with Windows. They are quite easy to make if you start out with a grid, to mimic the graph paper. The grid can be removed later, to make a better appearance, but could also be kept.

Another way to make maps in the computer is to use Excel, or the "table" option that you've got in MS Word, and make a table of say 8x8 squares. Each room is a square, and you put a number and a name on it. You can also write in the exits, if the doors are closed or locked, if the room in no_mob etc. If the zone is very large you might have to divide the map into 2 or more, but most zones will fit in one page.

I've got a system myself where N stands for a normal exit north, (N) means a closed door, ((N)) means a locked door and [N] a hidden exit. I also use fat or italic letters to show different types of terrain, which makes the map easier to read. (For instance the name of a building is bold letters, roads are always italic etc.).

So a room in my map would look approximately like this: (inside the square)

534
Main Street
no_mob
N (E) S ((W))

It's a quite simple system, and it encourages you to make the zones compact, which makes them easier to connect to the rest of the world. There is no need to fill every square in the grid with a room, but since I started making maps of this kind, I find myself always doing that. Naturally you don't need to connect all the rooms in all four directions, but grid zones are usually more ‘realistic’. A combination of grid-zones and linear zones usually is best, to make exploring a challenge.

Other advantages with mapping in the computer is that it's much easier to change the map, if you find out that you need to adjust it as you go along (which is mostly the case for me) and - above all - with this system you'll be able to e-mail a copy of your map to the Head Builder, who will no doubt be eternally grateful, since this really saves a lot of work when the zone is to be connected to the other world. (Maybe you'll even get a promotion, hehe!)

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I. Some building tips from an old Fox

ALWAYS make backups of your work. Bad crashes should really not happen, but they still do, and over the 10 years 4D has been on line we’ve lost a bit of Bulding work due to server crashes, and the fact that the Buildports didn’t get backed up as often as the Game Port. (This has changed now, and all the zones in Ports are backed up once a week. So a week’s work should be the most you could lose in 4D, but that is bad enough, if you were very active during that week.)

Many builders have lost months or even years of work, when a Mud disappeared over night, or when they got into a disagreement with the Admin and were kicked out or left on their own accord. The risk of this happening in 4D is slim. We are not likely to close down any time soon, and our policy is to always give the Builder a copy of their zone files on demand.

But even so, you should keep notations and copies of your work on your own computer, because that’s very helpful in keeping track of everything over time, and also makes it easier to make changes or additions to the zone, if you should want that later.

A very good idea is to write all the descs in Wordpad or MS Word, and then just paste them into the OLC in the Building Port. This way it is not only much easier to edit the descs. Writing in Word also gives you the chance to use the excellent built in synonym and spell check tool in that script. It doesn’t show ALL the typos, but it catches quite a few of them.

I always write the whole zone in Wordpad myself, before even entering the OLC, (rooms, mobs, objects and scripts). This makes it much easier to get a measured length of the desc in all rooms, because I can easily move chunks of text from one room to another. It also helps with balancing the strength of the mobs and objects, since I can compare them to one another in the list. And above all, it gives a much better overall look of the zone, making it easier to make everything consistent to theme, to weave in quests and puzzles and generally create a better zone.

DON’T create any fantastic super level weapon and equip, even if they are only meant for your Imm. For one thing, an Imm doesn’t need any equip at all, because Imms are invincible anyhow. You can almost always tell a 'newbie Imm' from the equip he/she is wearing. The experienced ones are usually naked, since they quit bothering with useless stuff. Another reason is that 'cheat equip' will never be allowed in the Game Port, so by creating it you just cause extra work for the Head Builders, who will control your zone before they approve it, and you also diminish your own chances of an 'Imm career', since making cheat equip shows that you are immature.

Try to think more of the mud in general, than on your own advantage. An unbalanced mud is never any fun to play. If you find that a majority of the players come to your zone just to get one special piece of equip, the chances are very high that this equip is way too powerful. So instead of being flattered that your zone is so popular, you should be ashamed that you made the mud unbalanced.

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J. "Builder's Block"

Every now and then some of my builders claim to be struck by what they call "Builder's Block", which I am given to understand is supposed to mean, that the flow of imagination and inspiration suddenly ceases to run. So here are a few suggestions about what to do when the well runs dry:

1. Take a walk in Real Life and look at the surroundings you are visiting with a Builder's eye. If the zone you are working on is a forest for instance, then go to the nearest wood, and try to describe it to yourself. You will find that there are a lot of things to describe in a pretty ordinary wood.

2. Take a virtual walk. Play a zone that is a bit similar to the one you are working on, and take your time to read the descriptions just for once, instead of just rushing through it killing things. If it's a well written zone, you may get some suggestions and inspiration from it. If it's a badly written zone, you may hopefully be seized with an urge to create something better yourself!

3. Discuss your zone with the Building Manager and/or your Builder colleagues. A few of them might be a bit more experienced than you are, and they might be able to give you some suggestions and input that will start your imagination flowing.

4. Discuss the zone with your RL girlfriend/boyfriend, mud friend other friends. Take a few beers together to get in the right mood, and then start a small brainstorming. Write down all the suggestions you get, and take a look at them next time you loose your imagination. (This is actually one of the better ways to start a zone too.) Only don't try to build when intoxicated - you'll have a hell of a time to correct all your typos afterwards...

5. View a movie or - better still - READ A BOOK! If the zone has a theme and a plot - which all good zones should have - there is usually a book, a poem or even a song somewhere in the background that you could lean on a bit.

One of my former Imps and Builder colleagues used to tap my brain incessantly for information about a zone that she was working on. When I finally got tired of it and told her to go read one of the numerous books available about the subject, she informed me in a patronising way, that she didn't fancy "stolen" descs!... Well, I am not that picky myself - (probably because my Mud Char is a thief). I don't often steal descs myself, but I wouldn't much mind if my Builders did, as long as no copyright problems are involved. Even Beethoven stole a bar or two every now and then. And in the choice between a desc that looks like something from the back of a cereal packet, and a piece of text stolen from Sir Walter Scott, I'd much rather have the latter!

6. Just stop doing room descs for a while, and create some mobs and objects instead. Mobs/objects are much easier and more fun to do than rooms, and while you are making them, you might get some inspiration for the room too, because in a well built zone the rooms, mobs and objects should all interact to create an entity that looks logical and "real" to the player. After all it is a virtual reality we create, or isn't it?

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1998-04-20, updated 2008-01-28
Molly O'Hara